Monthly Archives: April 2012

CROSSVILLE, Tenn. – A legendary local football coach is in trouble, accused of going too far with corporal punishment on a student.
A grand jury indicted Vaughn Davis on charges of simple assault. This after the mother of a 14-year-old special needs student complained to the district attorney.
“Mr. Davis took him outside and had him bend over a rock and paddled him three times,” said the child’s mother, who NewsChannel 5 did not identify to protect the identity of the child.
She said her son is recovering from a traumatic brain injury from an ATV crash and any further trauma like padding to his head or spine could have killed him. The boy was on the school’s “No Paddle” list, but the mother said it still happened.
“I was very devastated … appalled and disappointed,” she added.
She said her son is sometimes slow to respond to instructions, but said she’s not entirely sure why he was paddled. The Cumberland County director of schools declined to comment about the case.
“Some things were done that were horrible or even deplorable,” said attorney Alan Rose, who along with colleague Richard Brooks plans to file a federal civil lawsuit on behalf of the student.
Davis is very well-known and respected in the Crossville area. Over nearly a half century he’s coached and taught thousands of children. As a coach he’s won more than 14 championships and his name is on the Homestead Elementary school football field. There is even a day — September 24 — named for his honor in the town.
“He happened to be one of my teachers when I was growing up,” said District Attorney Randy York who presented the case to the grand jury. York said he couldn’t ignore the details of the complaint.
“The mother of the child brought this to our office and I felt that the Grand Jury should look at the case,” said York. York said criminal indictments in relation to corporal punishment are extremely rare. Such cases are usually settled within the school or in civil lawsuits. Davis is headed to criminal court. He could not be reached for comment.
The Cumberland County schools director said Davis is no longer teaching at Homestead Elementary school.
(If this guy gets convicted, It will go a long way in helping our cause.)
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By Sarah Gonzalez
MIAMI (2012-03-15) -Our story on Florida schools that paddle students was picked up by NPR and we’ve gotten some comments from folks who wondered about a sexual element to spanking.
John Shelley wrote: “Why do they hit the kids in the butt? Is this a sexual thing?” Conky Swayze wrote: “There’s so much sexual connotation with spanking that it does walk in that grey area.” Some who have been on the receiving end of a paddle say people outside of their community just don’t understand their culture. Melynda Howell is the guidance counselor at Sneads High School in Jackson County Fla., which auses corporal punishment. She graduated from the high school and said the last time she got a spanking from a male principal, she was 13 years old, and she had gotten in a fight with another girl in the school.
“We don’t see any sexual element whatsoever,” Howell said. “The principal was a male authority figure just like my father, so there was no difference to us, to me.” Sneads, Fla. is a small town in the Florida Panhandle with a population of about 2,000.
Howell says in this part of the rural north, high school girls and boys are not considered too d to get a spanking at school. “Most kids in our area have that type of discipline at home so they’re more comfortable with it in the school environment, Howell said.
“If you don’t experience that in California or at home, of course you would not be as comfortable with that at the school level.”
Schools with paddling polices are required by law to bring in a witness, and notify the parents after the punishment is administered.
But most schools volunteer to ask parents for permission before students are paddled.
The Community Trusts School Administrators
Some Florida schools, like Sneads High School, have polices where school administrators can only spank students of the same gender.
The principal of the school, Laurence Pender, says he has never hit a female student. For that he calls in his assistant principal, Faye Parker.
But Pender says his small town would support him if he did paddle female students. He says parents expect him to act like a parent to students under his supervision.
“It’s not something that is joked about or laughed about. It’s a very serious thing,” Pender said. “Its punishment.”
Schools that want to use corporal punishment have to apply every three years, and hear testimony from parents in the community.
Outside of the Panhandle, the community in rural Madison, Fla. decided high school students are too mature to get paddled, according to Willie Williams, principal at Madison County Central elementary and middle school.
The community decided teenage girls and boys in middle school can still be paddled.
And Williams says the community trusts the school administrators to discipline students in this way.
He says school corporal punishment works well in a small town because everyone knows each other.
“If I were in a big community, where I wasn’t known, where I didn’t get a chance to speak at church… for students to know that I know their parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles, I don’t think it would be possible in an urban area. I really don’t.”
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I know Sneads, Florida. It’s close to Lake Seminole in extreme north Florida. I’ve fished on Lake Seminole. My grandparents lived on the edge of the lake, close to the redneck town of Sneads. Sneads is a very impoverished area. It’s full of racism. You could easily hear the N word thrown out consistently. Maybe even by school administrators or the school guidance counselor. The guidance counselor who says she was beaten at the age of thirteen by a male principal. He probably told her to stick her rear end out. Most Americans would think this guy is some kind of pervert. Polls show seventy percent of the Americans population oppose school corporal punishment. Most American parents moderately spank their children, but they will not tolerate someone else spanking their child. School administrators in Sneads, Florida have no pride. They don’t care what people think of them.
I want to debate the school administers at Sneads-Laurence Pender and Faye Parker or the goofy school counselor Melynda Howell, but I believe they are too big a cowards to debate us. We will place the debate on you-tube. Maybe CNN will notice it. All arguments to keep school corporal punishment alive are intellectually bankrupt. Here’s what a friend of mine said about the pan-handle of Florida. He called it the Redneck Riviera. Rednecks are the ones beating kids in schools.
What is the graduation rate in Sneads, Florida? In Florida, it’s only seventy percent. What is it in Sneads? It’s probably less than seventy percent. Those schools in north Florida are some of the worst in America. What’s their graduation rate? I bet it is less than seventy percent. They are beating kids and causing them to drop out if school.
I need no course in human sexuality. Howell how do you feel about gay people? What causes a person to be gay? I think you hate gay people with a passion. You have a very narrow philosophy of life.